In 2007, Daniel discovered tenkara while researching the history and culture of fishing in Japan. In 2008, he visited Japan for his first time with his wife and saw tenkara in person. He returned to the US with a tenkara rod in his bag and started enjoying tenkara on backpacking trips. The method was simple and effective; yet, there was no information in English on tenkara. Daniel decided he wanted to share tenkara with people, it would make it easy for people to take-up fly-fishing and experienced anglers like himself were sure to enjoy its minimalist nature. He realized that to share tenkara he could have written many articles and books about it, but if people didn’t get a chance to experience tenkara for themselves it would not spread. Thus, Daniel set out to create a business designing tenkara rods, tenkara lines and tenkara flies and putting them in the hands of people.

In March of 2009, after several months of hard work creating the business and a month before Tenkara USA officially “opened doors”, Daniel left his nascent career in international banking to dedicate himself full-time to creating Tenkara USA. There were many challenges ahead with introducing a type of fishing that doesn’t target the largest fish around and went against the grain of the established industry.